The “I’m bored at a wedding” inclusive, LGBT, multi-ethnic children’s activity book

We have quite a lot of kids coming to our wedding, of all ages! Thanks to Offbeat Bride and Etsy I fell in love with the idea of custom activity books for them. But, checking out the other books, I immediately thought, how can I make these books even more inclusive?

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I wanted a book that was:

• not hetero-normative
• not Western-normative (ie. uses names that aren’t just John and Bob and doesn’t exoticize the weddings of other cultures, but rather embraces that weddings are about ever-changing traditions)
• not Western-wedding-normative (ie. doesn’t assume a bridal party or a three-tiered cake)

Basically, I needed the children’s activity book equivalent of the “Greendale Human Being!”

For example, I found a logic problem where seemingly white boys had crushes on white girls, but I re-wrote the entire thing to include not only a variety of names, but boys having crush on boys as well. I also thought of writing a story but got sucked into a swirling black hole of my mind asking “how do I write a story that doesn’t promote marriage, but isn’t against marriage?” Like one where some gender-non-conforming animals end up in polygamous marriages, but some stay single, and some get divorced later happily, and some stay married by choice… you get the picture. (Note: the activity book is still fairly cis-gendered).

If you’re still reading, you are probably shaking your head at me in disbelief or nodding enthusiastically. If you’re one of the ones nodding enthusiastically, I thought I’d share my files, so you can adopt it for your own wedding…

1. First, download the powerpoint of the activity book in order AND the powerpoint of the activity book for printing.
2. Download the fonts “Rock Salt” and “Coming Soon” from Google Fonts.
3. Second, customize it for you and your partner.
   • Download mazes for the letters of your first names.
   • Make your own crossword puzzle
   • Make your own word search
   • Change the mad libs to fit your meeting story!
4.  Print the file powerpoint for printing, double-sided, on legal size paper
5. Fold them, and, for an added touch, bind them together using coloured embroidery thread. (I used the method shown here to sew the booklet together)

I gave them out with little party packs of crayons for kids and adulty-kids to both enjoy!